Deep Smarts: how to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Human Wisdom By Dorothy Leonard

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Deep Smarts how to Cultivate and Transfer
Enduring Human WisdomBy Dorothy Leonard
Walter Swap Harvard Business School Press,
2005Book review by A.V.VedpuriswarNovember
2006
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Introduction

• Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap are well known
  knowledge management scholars.
  
• In this book they explain how organizations can
  develop and share expertise
  
• The term Deep Smarts denotes expertise.

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What are deep smarts?

• Inside most organizations, there are people with
  deep knowledge and expertise.
  
• They can quickly analyze complex situations,
  recognize patterns and make intuitive decisions
  that fetch good results.
  
• What makes these people valuable is their deep
  smarts, ie experience based wisdom.
  
• Deep smarts are built on first hand life
  experiences that result in tacit knowledge.
  
• Such knowledge is difficult for others to
  replicate.

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• Deep smarts are as close as we get to wisdom.
  They are based on know-how more than know-what,
  the ability to comprehend complex, interactive
  relationships and make swift, expert decisions
  based on that system level comprehension but also
  the ability when necessary to drive into
  component parts of the system and understand the
  details. Deep smarts cannot be attained through
  formal education alone but they can be
  deliberately nourished and grown and with
  dedication, transferred or recreated.

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Deep smarts score over novices in various ways.

• To start with, they know more.
• They are wiser, thanks to their rich repertoire
  of experiences.
  
• They also know how to make quick decisions.
• They know how to apply knowledge with suitable
  customization in a given context.

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• They know how to extrapolate their knowledge to
  new situations.
  
• Due to their rich experience, deep smarts can see
  in situations small variations that would escape
  the novice.
  
• They are also more aware of the boundaries of
  their knowledge than novices. So they can more
  easily identify a rare event.

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Key questions addressed in the book

• How does experience build knowledge?
• How do we know that past experience is important
  for the future?
  
• When is broad experience important?
• When is depth critical?
• What are the substitutes for direct experience?

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• How expertise develops
• It is necessary to go through both common and
  rare experiences to develop deep smarts.
  
• Going through extremes (positives and negatives)
  is an integral part of the education process.
  People with a limited range of experiences will
  find it difficult to acquire deep smarts.
• Deep smarts are backed by frameworks, concepts
  and mental models.
  
• The human brain has to be conditioned to receive
  new information and make sense of it.
  
• Without the appropriate mental receptors, it is
  difficult to accept new knowledge.
  
• Both background knowledge and openness to new
  knowledge are needed.

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• As the authors mention, In order for someone to
  capture complex, experience based knowledge, the
  persons brain has to contain receptors to which
  current inputs can be connected.
• Without receptors, the new messages and
  information cannot be incorporated into the brain
  structures.
  
• These messages remain relatively
  incomprehensible or meaningless.
  
• Information does not become knowledge unless it
  connects with something we already know.
  

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• Deep smarts depend on the extent of ones
  personal and professional network and the
  knowledge contained within the network.
  
• The reach of the network depends on both
  serendipity and purposeful construction.
  
• Trust, mutual understanding and shared values are
  important for effective knowledge sharing.
  
• If we have a good network, we can access the deep
  smarts we need easily and without incurring heavy
  expenses.

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Cultural issues

• Knowledge is not precise and definitive as is
  often perceived.
  
• Knowledge is subjective and is shaped/justified
  by many influences.
  
• Beliefs build up over time through both personal
  experiences and the influence of people around
  us.
  
• Beliefs can lead us to value certain kinds of
  knowledge over others and consider some
  assumptions to be more correct than those of
  other people.

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Cultural issues(Contd)

• Beliefs also determine what we absorb from the
  environment.
  
• Our beliefs deliberately or subconsciously filter
  incoming knowledge from other people and test
  those incoming messages against what we believe.
  
• Beliefs in what constitutes success and in the
  strategies that lead to success originate in the
  early days of an organization and become
  entrenched over time.

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• Very often, the main stumbling block in acquiring
  deep smarts lies in getting rid of beliefs which
  stand in the way.
  
• Beliefs form a kind of hierarchy. There are
  central/core beliefs, less central/peripheral
  ones and inconsequential ones. The more central
  the beliefs, the more difficult it will be for
  either the knowledge source or recipient to
  relinquish them.
• How do we change deeply entrenched beliefs?
• One is by regularly challenging assumptions.
• A second way of affecting beliefs is by framing
  a situation differently.
  
• Since central beliefs are based on experience,
  contrary experience is most likely to alter a
  prior belief.
  

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Social influences

• Social influences play an important role in the
  development of deep smarts.
  
• People get influenced by various mechanisms
  ranging from overt arm twisting at one extreme to
  more complex brainwashing at the other.
  
• Compliance with an expert may result in
  superficial behavior change but little change in
  underlying beliefs and usually does not lead to
  development of deep smarts.

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Social influences(Contd)

• Group pressures towards conformity influence
  people to change their behavior, even when they
  realize it is wrong to do so.
  
• Under conditions of uncertainty, emotions take
  over. Even otherwise, intelligent, strong-minded
  people, succumb to herd behavior.
  
• When we particularly admire or like a group, that
  group becomes our tribe and can exert a powerful
  influence shaping our central beliefs, behavior
  and knowledge. The importance of these social
  influences should not be underestimated while
  planning the transfer of knowledge.

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Transferring Deep Smarts

• Different coaching techniques can be used to
  transfer expertise depending on the situation and
  the personal predisposition of the coach
  
• Directives/Presentations/Lectures.
• Rules of thumb
• Stories with a moral
• Socratic questioning
• Learning by doing or Guided experience Guided
  practice/Guided observation/Guided problem
  solving/Guided experimentation.
  

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Give straight instructions

• At the lowest level of self directedness, the
  coach tells the protégé what to do and the
  learner has little to do except to pay attention
  and follow orders.
• Such a technique is useful if the protégé is
  experienced and can absorb the knowledge.
  
• It is also useful if the protégés are so
  inexperienced that telling them what to do is the
  most efficient way of transferring expertise.

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• Rules of Thumb
• At the next level, come rules of thumb.
• Coaches usually have a vast storehouse of
  patterns from which to draw.
  
• So they can transfer rules of thumb, i.e. compact
  statements that summarize a great many patterns
  into one simple, memorable and usually reliable
  rule.
• Novices often find rules of thumb useful
  shortcuts to more contextualized knowledge and
  coaches can rely on them to transfer knowledge
  quickly and efficiently.
• Sometimes the rule of thumb can be embedded in a
  cryptic analogy.
  

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Story telling

• Story telling is another powerful technique for
  knowledge transfer.
  
• Relating stories based on past experiences can
  be an effective way of transferring lessons
  learnt from that experience.
  
• Such lessons are likely to be remembered.
• The more vivid the images evoked by the story,
  the more memorable the story will be.

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Socratic questioning

• Socratic questioning is another effective
  coaching technique.
  
• People often learn more when prodded to find
  questions to answers themselves.
  
• Questions can prompt the protégé to clarify and
  refine vague wording and thinking and challenge
  the underlying assumptions.
  
• If done properly, the Socratic method can engage
  the learner actively.

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Direct experience

• The best way of transferring deep smarts is by
  direct experience and discovery, when guided by a
  coach.
  
• Deep smarts essentially amount to wisdom.
  Instead of trying to transfer this wisdom, it is
  better to recreate the wisdom.
  
• Guided experience is clearly more powerful than
  other methods of knowledge creation and transfer.
  
  
• Directed action captures the essence of
  deliberate practice. By reflecting on their
  experiences, the protégés learn deep. The
  protégés get training in distilling knowledge out
  of observations.

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• Guided problem solving and guided experimentation
  are other ways of transferring deep smarts.
  
• Guided problem solving requires active engagement
  from the protégé. The protégé learns how to
  approach the problem.
  
• Under conditions of uncertainty, there is a need
  to experiment. Experimentation builds experience,
  rapidly and systematically. Experiments yield
  knowledge and the individuals who conduct them,
  think in terms of options for change.

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Do it slowly

• Deep smarts are difficult to transfer because
  they involve pattern recognition which in turn
  depends on experience and deliberate practice.
  
• Such expertise can be transferred only gradually
  and slowly.
  
• The human dimension is extremely important.
  Technology can help but only to a point.

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Dont leave it to serendipity

• Learning is not always a formal or deliberate
  process. Formal instruction and online courses
  cannot meet this requirement.
  
• Deep smarts develop continuously, at work, in
  leisure, during parties and meetings.
  
• But the more consciously we design our own
  experience and that of those individuals who need
  to move up the ladder of expertise, the deeper
  the resulting smarts.

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• THANK YOU